Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Of The Vice Presidency 20160704

Position. From the gerald. Are. Ford president ial library, this is an hour. Good evening again. The timing for tonights program is prescient as is always the case at the ford library as we are on the verge of seeing who the current nominees for the presidency will select as their running mates. Some of you picked up copies of an article from the wall street journal recently as you entered the auditorium. Its on the impact of the Vice President ial nominee on election results. For those of you who didnt pick up copies, were having extras run right now and well have them for you after the program. Tonight were going to be discussing not just the electoral process but the evolving role of the vice presidency. And we have the honor of hosting professor joel goldstein, who is the author of a newly released book the white house vice presidency, the path to significance from mondale to biden. Dr. Goldstein is a highly respected scholar of the vice presidency, the presidency and constitutional law having written widely in all three areas. He has consistently sought out by national and International Media out lets for commentary and insight, especially during the president ial campaigns. In fact, in a 2012 article in the New York Times he was quoted as saying my wife says that i am an exotic plant that blooms every four years. [ laughter ] professor goldstein is best known for his work on the vice presidency. It came out of his doctoral work, his dissertation and led to his first book which was the modern american vice presidency, the transformation of a political institution. Over the years he has also authored numerous book chapters and articles on the executive branch, constitutional law, and admiralty law. He received a doctorate in Political Science at Oxford University where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar and then a law degree from Harvard Law School where he was a note editor for the harvard law review. After law school, he was a law clerk for a federal skbruj in massachusetts and then practiced admiralty law for 12 years in st. Louis. He joined the st. Louis University School of law in 1994, was associate dean of the faculty for three years and was awarded the Vincent Immelt professorship in 2005. One scholar commented the american vice presidency is long overdue for a robust reevaluation and joel goldstein, the premier chronicler of that special office has done a brilliant job in this perceptive wide ranging book and i can vouch for that. So please help me join professor goldstein to the ford president ial library. [ applause ] thank you very much. Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction. Im delighted to be back at the ford library, i did research here for my book and its wonderful to have the opportunity to be here. When most of you think about a president ford, you probably think about him as our 38th president , a man who served nearly 25 years in the house of representatives with the minority leader, the house of representatives for eight years and was a good and decent public servant. When i think about him, i think about the fact that he was our 40th Vice President , a position he held for nine months and was probably the least happy period of his public service. But he was an important figure in the vice presidency. He was the first Vice President appointed to the position through the 25th amendment which became part of the constitution in 1967. He was the second person to make an appointment of a Vice President under the 2 fifth amendment. He was the ninth and the most recent Vice President to succeed to the president to the presidency following an unexpected president ial Timothy Mcveigh kansi and the only one of those people to follow to succeed following a president ial resignation. And hes the only president in our history to seriously consider serving as Vice President after he had already served as president. And although president fords presidency and vice presidency really came before the period that ive called the white house vice presidency, he played an important part in developing and creating the office that we have today. We live in a period now where we have a very robust vice presidency. And whats so striking about that, in addition to the rather checkered history of the vice presidency for most of our history, is that the vice presidency has grown to its current importance at a time when many of our other Major Political institutions are being met with increasing dissatisfaction. If you think about the current situation, Vice President biden is completing the final year of a very consequential and involved vice presidency. If you lookt what he has done similarfully the past week or so he traveled to iraq to meet with its embattled Prime Minister and to support the military mission against the islamic state. He went to italy where he met with officials of the Italian Government and he met with officials of the vatican including pope francis. He spoke at a vatican conference on combatting disease. Hes met privately with president obama on numerous times during the past week, including receiving the president s Daily Briefing each day. He had private lunch with the president today and did two other events with him. He joined the president s meeting with secretary kerry within the last week. He met with the leaders of el salvador, guatemala, honduras, panama to discuss how to advance security and economic matters in central america. And if you recall Vice President bidens predecessor, dick cheney, who first came to National Attention as president fords chief of staff, during his vice presidency many people said that they thought that the vice presidency had become too powerful and spoke of an imperial vice presidency. And although i think that Vice President cheneys power was exaggerated in the sense that i think he never was president or never was copresident , and that his influence declined during the second term of president bushs administration, he clearly was a very, very significant Vice President. But it didnt start with biden and cheney. In fact, the last six Vice President s over the last 40 years ever since Walter Mondale was Vice President have really performed significant positions within the executive branch. The change in the vice presidency is institutional, its not personal. The vice presidency has now become one of our governments most important and contributing institutions in the executive branch. Not simply as a first president ial successor but as a critical instrument of the presidency on an ongoing basis. Well, it wasnt always this way. Our first Vice President , john adams, said that my country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the imagination of man contrived or his imagination conceived. I can do neither good nor evil. Woodrow wilson was a political scientist before he became a president and in 1885 he wrote about that the chief embarrassment in discussing the vice presidency is that when youve said how little there is to be said about it youve said all there is to be said. [ laughter ] his Vice President was thomas marshall. In retirement, mr. Marshall said i dont want to work anymore, but i wouldnt mind being Vice President again. [ laughter ] and when president ford became our 40th Vice President when he was sworn in to that position on december 6, 1973, he referred to the limited powers and duties of the vice presidency. His Vice President , Nelson Rockefeller, disparaged his final office as simply standby equipment in 1976. So how did we get from the office that president ford called the limited powers and duties of the vice presidency and rockefeller referred to as simply standby equipment in the mid1970s to the very different Robust Office that we have today . What i want to do in the next few minutes is to give a brief overview of the vice presidency as it existed for most of our history then to sketch the office as it exists today, what ive called the white house vice presidency and then to make a few suggestions as to what i think we can learn from this transformation. The vice presidency wasnt one of the Founding Fathers great successes. It was created for reasons that are now obsolete. The founders were concerned that after George Washington it would be impossible to elect a national president. They were worried that parochial considerations would force electors in the different states to vote for their states favorite son rather than to elect a national president. So in order to combat that concern, what they did is they created the original president ial election system and they gave each elector two votes for president. But they required that one of those votes had to be cast for somebody who wasnt from the electors home state. And so what they hoped would happen is that the second vote, the vote that wasnt going to the home state favorite son would actually produce a National Consensus president. In essence, they created the vice presidency to then to provide an incentive for electors to vote seriously so that there would be a consequence to their vote. There would be somebody who would be elected to the second office. Hugh william sson from North Carolina a delegate to the philadelphia convention, at the convention said the vice presidency wasnt wanted it was created simply to facilitate a valuable mode of president ial election. Well, alexander hamilton, who recently has experienced something of a resurgence wrote in federalist 68 that the president ial electoral system, including the vice presidency, is if not perfect at least excellent. I hesitate to take mr. Hamilton on given his current standing. [ laughter ] but i think history would demonstrate that he was wrong at least in that judgment. By 1796, National Parties have begun to form and what they were doing was slating tickets of one candidate for president , one candidate for Vice President. In 1800, Thomas Jefferson and aaron burr were running together with the understanding that jefferson was the president ial candidate, burr was the Vice President ial candidate. But all of the Jefferson Burr electors voted for each one of them so they ended up in a tie. Although jeffersons votes were really for president and burrs were for Vice President , they it resulted in a tie, it took the house of representatives 36 ballots to break the tie and to elect jefferson as the president and after that, the jeffersonians were afraid that the federalists in the future could bargain with whoever was jeffersons running mate to make a deal with him and thereby elect jeffersons Vice President ial running mate as the president. So they arranged to have the constitution amended and to entact 12th amendment to the constitution which separated the election of president and Vice President so that the electors would vote not twice for president but would vote once for president and once for Vice President. Well, that change really eliminated the original reason to have the vice presidency and the discussions over the 12th amendment some people said, you know, we should get rid of the vice presidency now. But they decided it was simpler to keep it than to get rid of it and so the vice presidency continued. And it continued really entirely as a legislative office. The Vice President s sole responsibility was to preside over the senate. At the philadelphia convention, Roger Sherman from connecticut said if the Vice President is not the president of the senate hes not going to have anything to do. So they agreed that the Vice President would be the president of the senate and thats what our Vice President s really up until Alvin Barkley who was president trumans Vice President did. They spent most of their professional time presiding over the senate. But the senate didnt elect the Vice President and they couldnt remove the Vice President so the senate was never interested in letting the Vice President have much control so the Vice President would preside but really have no power over the senate. Of course, the other function of the Vice President was to serve as a president ial successor. But that was an entirely contingent role. So for most of our history, the vice presidency was pretty insignificant. Vice president s had little to do so they looked for other things to keep their themselves busy. Richard mentor johnson, who was Martin Van Burens Vice President spent much of his time when he wasnt presiding over the Senate Running a tavern in washington. [ laughter ] henry wilson, who was ulysses grants second Vice President wrote history books during his vice presidency and Theodore Roosevelt who didnt want to be Vice President and said hed rather be anything other than Vice President , it was too little work for a man of only 42 years old thought he might spend his vice presidency going to law school. In the 19th century and up through the first third or so of the 20th century the president ial candidate didnt choose his running mate. The conventions chose the running mate and they often generally chose the running mate in order to balance the ticket either on ideological grounds or geographical grounds. Sometimes youd have president ial candidates and Vice President ial candidates who disagreed were on opposite sides of major issues of the day. Sometimes it was used to secure a deal for the nomination of a president ial candidate. Sometimes a politician from a swing state was chosen as the Vice President ial candidate between 1904 and 1916 there were eight Vice President ial candidate, five of them from the state of indiana. Often times the Vice President ial candidates in the 19th century were really pretty undistinguished people. Chester arthur, who was james garfields Vice President before he succeeded president garfield, before he became Vice President the highest position that he ever held was as the collector of customs in the port of new york garrett hobart, Vice President mckinleys Vice President , never held any Public Office other than state legislature in the state of new jersey. William king, who was franklin pierces Vice President did have a lot of experience but he was very sick when he was chosen to be Vice President. In fact, so sick he resigned from the senate because he couldnt continue to perform his role in the senate and he died soon after his election. Being Vice President wasnt a good career move for somebody in most of the 19th century. Only three 19th century Vice President s were elected to a second term and none after 1836. Although five president s in the period from 1828 to 1900 were elected to a second term, none with the same Vice President. The four Vice President s who succeeded to the presidency in the 19th century, none of them were elected to their own term as president and the vice presidency wasnt a good president ial springboard. When Daniel Webster was offered a position on the 1848 ticket with Zachary Taylor he refused saying i dont propose to be buried until im dead. [ laughter ] it wasnt the wisest move of the great websters career. He always wanted to be president. Some months later Zachary Taylor died and Millard Fillmore instead became president from 1836 when Martin Van Buren was elected as the sitting Vice President to succeed as andrew jackson, until 1998 when george h. W. Bush was elected to succeed ronald reagan, no sitting Vice President was ever elected to the presidency and other than John Breckenridge in 1856, none was nominated to seek the presidency by a major party until Richard Nixon was in 1960. So at the beginning of the 20th century there was a common joke that was told about the parents who had two sons, one went off to sea, the other became Vice President , neither was ever heard from again. [ laughter ] but at the beginning of the 20th century the vice presidency began to take baby steps forward and towards the executive branch. President Warren Harding invited his Vice President Calvin Coolidge to meet with the cabinet. The move was controversial at the time but Vice President coolidge did meet with hardings cabinet and that became something of a tradition. Franklin roosevelt used john nantz garner as a legislative liaison and sent him on foreign trips before they had a falling out during the second term president roosevelt used his second Vice President , henry wallace, made him the head of the board of Economic Warfare during world war ii but wallace ran into controversy with members of fdrs cabinet and soon lost that position and then was dropped from the 1944 ticket. President roosevelts third Vice President , harry truman, had very limited contact with president roosevelt during the 82 days of president trumans vice presidency. In fact, president truman wasnt told about the Manhattan Project until some days after he succeeded president roosevelt when one of his advisors took him aside and said mr. President , i think theres something you need to know about. The changes in the American Government ended up having an effect on the vice presidency. They strengthen the presidency, they weaken the Political Parties and they had the effect of pulling the vice presidency into the executive branch. As the expectations of the presidency increased in a nuclear age and in the cold war, as the president was expected to conduct a more robust Foreign Policy and as Technology Made foreign travel more possible Vice President s began to be sent on Diplomatic Missions, they began to take on other tasks in the executive branch. Beginning in 1940, the president got the power really to desz nate who his running mate would be at the convention so the office really began to move into the executive branch beginning with the vice presidency of Richard Nixon in 1953. Vice president nixons office was still at the Capital Building but unlike his predecessors nixon spent most of his time spent almost no time presiding over the senate, he spent most of his time going to meetings in the executive branch, meeting with president eisenhowers cabinet, National Security consul, taking Foreign Missions for president eisenhower, often times he would go for a month or two months on a foreign trip doing political work for the president , heading executive branch commissions and so forth. And Vice President nixons successors, lyndon johnson, Hubert Humphrey, spiro agnew, gerald ford and Nelson Rockefeller essentially followed the nixon model. Their office moved into the executive office building, they took on more functioning in the executive branch chairing commissions, making trips for the president , doing political work other than Vice President agnew i think all of these people were really among the leading political figures of their political generation and the vice presidency became a president ial springboard and it became attractive to able people for that reason. Nixon and Hubert Humphrey were nominated to seek the presidency and spiro agnew was the frontrunner for 1976 in gallup polls, at least, until he had to resign from office. But even so, with this growth during the period from nixon to rockefeller there still were limitations, the primary focus of the vice presidency was on providing a president ial successor. The executive branch work the Vice President s took on tended to be episodic. It tended to be peripheral. The Vice President s werent part of the president s inner circle. And Vice President s tended to feel pretty underutilized and pretty frustrated with their positions. President eisenhower wanted to dump Vice President nixon from the ticket in 1956. He suggested to him that he might chart his own course and that his political future might be brighter if he took a cabinet position but Vice President nixon had no desire to leave the vice presidency. Laettner august of 1960 when Vice President nixon was running for president and was suggesting a reason people should vote for him instead of senator john kennedy from massachusetts was that he had such extensive experience as Vice President , president eisenhower asked at a press conference if he could name a single idea that Vice President nixon contributed to the administration and Vice President and president eisenhower got sort of irritated and he said i dont know, if you give me a week i might think of one, i dont know. [ laughter ] at the first president ial debate, Vice President nixon was asked about this because more than a week had passed and the president hadnt come forward and suggested any ideas. Lyndon johnson said that president kennedy treated him well but he said that he hated every minute that he was Vice President. That every time he was in president kennedys presence he felt like he was a raven hovering around his head. Hubert humphrey perhaps because president johnson had a miserable time as Vice President , president johnson made sure that Vice President humphrey had a miserable time as Vice President. [ laughter ] after Vice President Humphrey Early on expressed some disagreement or different views about how the United States should handle matters in vietnam president johnson stopped inviting him to meetings to discuss vietnam and some of you may recall there was a political satirist named tom lire who wrote a song called whatever became of you, hubert . And my favorite line from the song was second if i had is a hard part, i know, when they dont even give you a bow. [ laughter ] president nixon detested spiro agnew. Early on there there would be conferences where president nixon would be talking to bob haldeman and John Erlichman and they would say that agnew wants to meet with you and president nixon would say the president doesnt meet with the Vice President. Thats not how it works. Thats not his job. Thats not part of the deal. President fords nine months as Vice President were probably the least happy time of his public servi service. He took on some Commission Work in the executive branch, commission on privacy, he did some legislative liaison but he spent much of the time traveling around the country trying to help republican candidates who were being hurt by the watergate scandal and station as far from it as he could. When he designated Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice President , president ford wanted to do something with the vice presidency, he liked Nelson Rockefeller, he admired his ability. He wanted to make use of him, he wanted to make Vice President rockefellers staff feel welcome. He felt that the ford Vice President ial staff had not been included and he wanted to make sure that wasnt repeated. Yet it didnt work out that way. At governor rockefellers request, president ford made governor rock fell, Vice President rockefeller, the head of the Domestic Council and Vice President rockefeller thought if he was head of the domestic consul he would be to Domestic Affairs what Henry Kissinger was to Foreign Policy but there were also sorts of problems. The domestic cabinet officials didnt want to report to the president through the Vice President. Chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld thought if Henry Kissinger was running Foreign Policy and Nelson Rockefeller was run dough midwest i can policy what did that leave for the president . And there were other problems in terms of the staff of the domestic consul had to report through regular channels and not just through the Vice President and so the whole experiment of having the Vice President running the domestic consul didnt work Vice President rockefeller not withstanding the Good Relationship between president ford and Vice President rockefeller, he wasnt consulted on many important matters and ultimately he was dropped from the ticket in 1976 and the last time that a Vice President hasnt been asked to run for reelection or election with the president. Well, its worth pausing to think about why didnt the vice presidency develop as it later did under the Ford Rockefeller regime . Because president ford, im convinced, very much wanted it to happen. And i think it didnt happen because they started off with the wrong vision of the office. Vice president rockefellers idea was that he could be powerful if he had a particular piece of the government to run and yet by taking that view of the office he really ended up buying a bunch of problems for himself. He created competition with the president s staff, he put the president in a position where if the Vice President took an action that the president wasnt comfortable with it created an awful awkwardness for the president. I think a second reason that the vice presidency didnt develop during the Ford Administration was that Vice President rockefeller really wasnt cut out to be number two. He was an able person but he never had been a number two. Hed been governor of new york for 14 years and he wasnt suited by his experience or his temperament to be a follower. Third, the politics between the two of them were wrong. Although they were personally compatible, politically he was not compatible with president ford on many major initiatives. And at a time when president ford was trying to cut the deficit and to rein in spending, Vice President rockefeller was proposing ambitious spending proposa proposals. Then on top of that president ford was challenged in the republican primaries in 1976 by governor reagan, the conservatives in the Republican Party had no use for Vice President rockefeller going way back to the 1964 campaign and so Vice President rockefeller became a serious political liability for the president. And then on top of that there was conflict between the Vice President and the president s staff. The Vice President became convinced that the chiefs of staff, Donald Rumsfeld and dick cheney, were really out to get him. When the Vice President s residence was opened in 1975 or 1976, Vice President rockefeller had a series of parties to introduce people to the new Vice President s residence and supposedly everybody in town was invited to one of those parties except for the chief of staff dick cheney. [ laughter ] and the other problem the Ford Administration had was that Vice President rockefeller wasnt there for the first four months of the Ford Administration. He was undergoing confirmation proceedings before the house and senate and so he wasnt able to participate at the ground floor in the early stages of the Ford Administration. By the time he came into the administration, relationships had already been formed, patterns of dealing had already been set, it was too late. Well, the change in vice presidency really came with jimmy carter and Walter Mondale in 1977. And this was the creation of what ive called the white house vice presidency. Governor carter thought of himself as sort of a fiduciary for the american people. As a small businessman, he thought that the vice presidency had been a wasted asset. That it was a shame to have a senior official and not to be putting him to use. And he also thought it was immoral for a Vice President not to be engaged and prepared. He was haunted is by the experience of president truman of being not having been included in discussions during the roosevelt presidency well, governor carter secured the nomination early on, early june of 1976 about five weeks before the Democratic Convention and he took the selection of a running mate seriously. He engaged in a serious vetting process. He had his closest confidante, an atlanta lawyer vet Vice President ial candidates. He decided he needed to run with a senator or congressman to balance off his own lack of experience in the federal government. Although he initially had reservations about Walter Mondale, thought he was too liberal, thought was bothered by the fact that mondale pulled out early from the president ial race, when they met in early july about eight days before the Democratic Convention they hit it off and carter became very impressed with mondale and he thought mondale had the experience and resources carter needed. He was popular with he knew his way around the district of columbia, he was popular in congress, he was popular with liberals and governor carter took an inclusive approach to mondale and his Campaign Team even during the campaign. In the 1976 president ial campaign, governor carter, president ford agreed to debate and they invented for the first time the idea the institution of a Vice President ial debate which weve had in every president ial election since except for 1980. And in the Vice President ial debate, mondale was deemed to have done much better than senator bob dole. Afterwards carters Campaign Manager said that mondale added about 3 to carters ticket and carter in his speeches in the closing few weeks of the campaign almost invariably mentioned mondale as an asset and as a signal of the kind of Decision Making that he was capable of. And then during the president ial transition, for the first time in history carter involved mondale in the transition. Involved him in meeting with cabinet officers, in setting the policy for the administration, and so forth and he went out of his way to signal that mondale would be an important part of the administration. Well, given that he had picked a running mate who he was personally compatible with, given he picked a running mate who he felt ideologically compatible with, given that he picked somebody who he thought could add needed resources to his administration and give than he picked somebody who he thought was able and both a leader and a follower i think the other thing that was critical was the vision of the vice presidency that Vice President mondale came up with. And it was really 180 degrees from the vision that Nelson Rockefeller had had, whereas Vice President rockefellers view was that everything about the vice presidency turned on the fact that the Vice President was the first president ial successor, what Vice President mondale tried to do was to deemphasize the fact that he was the first president ial successor and to think about ways in which he could make the vice presidency an ongoing substantive position that was not focused on providing a successor to the president but in helping the president succeed. And that step really changed the whole psychology of the relationship between the president and Vice President and even more important between the president s staff and the Vice President. Vice president mondales vision was that instead of taking a part of the government that he would be in charge of, that he would run, that he would own, he wanted simply to be a general advisor and troubleshooter where he would advise the president on matters across the board and would take on assignments for the president but he didnt want to own anything. He thought if he owned a part of the program that he would alienate whoever was giving up that part of the program. That president s tended to give Vice President s relatively trivial matters to be in charge of because if things went bad then the consequences of taking them away were reduced. And that he was afraid that if he took on ongoing assignments that it would take him away, it would divert his time and his attention from advising the president and helping the president on matters central to the presidency. But in order for the vice presidency to succeed in this way, Vice President mondale and president carter concluded that the Vice President needed to have a new set of resources, he needed to have access to the presidency, he needed to have the same information that the president had, including the National Security briefings. He needed to be part of the decisionmaking process and his staff needed to be part of the decisionmaking process, he needed to have adequate support from the Vice President ial staff and from the president ial staff so that they would respond to his requests and he needed to have the president s visible and consistent support and president carter agreed to everything that Vice President mondale asked. They developed a pattern of having a weekly private lunch. President carter directed that Vice President mondale would get every document that he got. He directed that Vice President mondale had the right to come into the oval office whenever he wanted without an invitation, he could attend any meeting on the president s schedule. He appointed members of the Vice President s staff to the National Security council, the domestic consul. And then he went beyond it. He gave Vice President mondale things he hasnt asked for. For the first time, really, he gave the Vice President an office in the west wing of the white house. He sent over a floor plan of the west wing and he said pick any office you want other than the oval office. Then he also told his staff two things. He said you should always treat a request from the Vice President as if its a request from the president and if anybody ever undercuts the Vice President , theyll lose their job. Well, the Carter Mondale term really brought the Vice President for the first time into the white house both physically and into the inner circle of the president ial decisionmaking. Because president carter was seen to value Vice President mondale, others valued Vice President mondale other people wanted to deal with the Vice President because they knew he had access. They knew he had influence with the president. They knew that if they could convince the Vice President that they had a better chance of convincing the president and because other people dealt with the Vice President in this manner, the Vice President s value to the president increased as well. Well, subsequent Vice President s adopted, really, and president s adopted a very similar model. Really all of the Vice President s from bush on have followed essentially the model that president carter and Vice President mondale established. Vice president bush after having competed with president reagan, after being chosen despite the fact that the reagans had misgivings about him developed a very Good Relationship with president reagan. After the assassination attempt on president reagans life on march 30, 1981, Vice President bush was viewed by even president reagans closest people to have handled himself with the greatest sensitivity and tact and competence. He took on a number of important Diplomatic Missions for the president. He became a close president ial advisor. He was he really subordinated his ambitions, especially during the first term, to the president s and throughout the administration was extremely loyal to the president. When he became president , he set up the same sort of relationship with Vice President dan quayle. Vice president quayle met with the president everyday for his National Security small meeting and then for a small meeting with the chief of staff, he had the weekly lunch and he served as a valuable legislative and political advisor and operator for president bush. Al gore became president clintons closest advisor, probably, for most of his presidency, in addition took on some significant portfolios during the clinton presidency, he was in charge of environment, telecommunications, he was in charge of reinvented government which was an initiative that was very important to president clinton. He claihaired a commission withe Prime Minister of russia at a time when there was concern that Boris Yeltsin was unstable, it was thought it was important to develop relations at other levels so the gore chair know motorcaden became the place where a lot of business with the soviet union was done. Vice president dick cheney started off his term with some unique advantages, unlike the other Vice President s during this period, he had really served in major positions in the executive branch, as chief of staff under president ford, secretary defense under the first president bush in the house of representatives and on the house leadership ladder during the reagan presidency. And in addition, he had a close relationship that with president bush that developed both because he knew had worked with the second president bushs father but also that he chaired the Vice President ial selection and then he participated and chaired the transition. And after 9 11 Vice President cheney i think became more influential, played a leading role in the Bush Administration with respect to National Security matters especially, with respect to the war on terror, with respect to energy and economic matters. His power, i think, declined during the second term for a variety of reasons but throughout his two terms he was somebody who was among the people that president t president listened to and Vice President biden has continued in the pattern and really has sustained a level of influence for two terms that i think is really unprecedented in our history. At the beginning of the administration he was charged with implementing the recovery act, the disengagement from iraq. He later negotiated the various budget deals with senator mcdonnel, hes continued to be a close advisor to the president , hes taken on numerous Diplomatic Missions for the president and so all of these Vice President s during this period from mondale to biden have functioned as acrosstheboard president ial advisors and troubleshooters. Some have emphasized some activities, diplomacy, others have emphasized other activities, perhaps legislative work but theyve always taken on role to try and help the president on an ongoing basis. Well, let me suggest in closing some lessons from this history. The first lesson i think is that the vice presidency now matters. That the vice presidency is an ongoing position of significa e significance. Its not primarily a president ial successor although it serves that function but its an on going position of importance. An acrosstheboarded a visor with political skills, a highlevel troubleshooter, somebody who can give the president help that the president needs. It provides the president with an invaluable asset to make his or her administration succeed. Second because of the significance of the vice presidency, it now matters whos the Vice President and who the Vice President ial candidates are. I havent talked much about Vice President ial selection and, of course, thats the part of the National Conversation now. But who is selected as the Vice President ial running mate is enormously important now and the factors that ought to be considered are whether or not theres somebody who has the leadership ability to be president not someday but now, whether they can enhance the administration by the quality that they would bring to it. Not all of the Political Considerations that are talked about third, the change in the vice presidency is, i think, institutional, enduring, and constitutional in a sense. And whats significant about this is that the change in the vice presidency really doesnt depend hasnt depended on any change in constitutional amendment in recent times or any change in statutory law. Its rather been a change in behavior. Its been an example of establishing behaviors during the Carter Mondale administration largely and other administrations, copying them, improving on them, strengthening them. Fourth, in order to make institutions to improve institutions the way the vice presidency has been improved, leadership matters. Its not enough to want to improve something. Its also critical that you make a that you really come to understand the institution that youre trying to improve, that you have a workable vision of the institution that the implementation process of that vision but done sensitively and successfully and that it be transmitted to successors. And finally i would say that the story that i would tell of the modern vice presidency and really the story of my book is really an optimistic one because if you can take the office that has been the most disparaged office in our history and, at a time when many of our other institutions are suffering and are losing public confidence, if this office can improve and become significant, really, for the first time in our history as it has over the last 40 years then perhaps theres some hope that we can turn some of our other institutions into a way that is more pleasing to us is they better serve our needs. So id be happy to take any questions or to hear any thoughts that people have. Theres a microphone at the back. What happens to Vice President s after they leave office . Well, its a range of the question was what happens to Vice President s after they leave office. Its depends on each person has a different story. I mean Vice President mondale was lost in 1984 1980, practiced law and ran for president. Vice president bush became president. Vice president quayle tried twice to run for president unsuccessfully Vice President gore lost the presidency, won a nobel prize, Vice President dick cheney left office and became a public critic of the administration and remained a vocal and visible figure in the national discourse. So i think theyve done different things. Some defeated Vice President ial candidates earl warren became chief justice of the United States, paul ryan became speaker of the house, ed muskie became secretary of state. Its really been a range and many of them have been very distinguished for their careers. My question is deals with some of the things you mentioned about the 25th amendment and chapter 13. And id like you to respond to what ive heard of two criticisms of the 25th amendment, one, that the second section of it alous for having a president and Vice President neither of whom are elected which, of course, has happened and some criticize but also then section four that some critics would say in spite of if i can quote one of your sentences here, when a president is unconscious yet retains power, the Vice President and cabinet will likely act only under clear and compelling circumstances. In spite of that, some critics would say its unwise that we have put into the constitution a way for the Vice President and the cabinet and, yes, in a secondary role the congress, to overthrow a president , if you could respond to those two criticisms, please. Sure. The 25th amendment, section two is the provision that says that where theres a Vice President ial vacancy for any reason the president can nominate a Vice President and the Vice President takes office upon confirmation by the house and the senate. Andsenate. So during the Ford Administration of course president ford became Vice President through the 25th amendment, and then Vice President rockefeller became Vice President through the 25th amendment. And the criticism was that neither of them had run in a national election. I think thats certainly true. By the same token they both received an awful lot of scrutiny. The theory behind the 25th amendment is that the president is entitled to choose somebody who reflects his or her ideology. So that the theory was and many liberal democrats voted for Vice President ford on the theory even though they disagreed with him politically, they thought he was his views were consistent on most issues with president nixon sort of refleblgted the nixon election of 1972. Suddenly his appointment of rockefeller then reflects the same trend, but i think the idea is that senators and congressmen are really serve as a surrogate for the elect rat. Its hard to come up with an alternative. I think most people thought the 25th amendment in 197374 worked quite well because given that you had a democratic speaker at the time and you had president nixon facing impeachment, that it would have been more difficult to remove a president if you couldnt put in a Vice President who was from the same party. With respect to section four, Section Three provides a system whereby the president can voluntarily turn power over to the Vice President if the president s disabled. Section 4 deals with the situation where if the president is either unwilling or unable to declare his or her own inability, the Vice President and the cabinet can say that the president is disabled and then the Vice President acts as president until the president s able to return to power. And, sure, theres a risk of the Vice President and cabinet throwing the president out. On the other hand theres risk you need to have some system, the 25th section 4 was really viewed as putting more of a check on the Vice President by having the cabinet participate in the process. Before then some people thought that the Vice President would have the unilateral power to declare the president s disability. In fact, president eisenhower, who took these issues very seriously following his three disabilities wrote a letter to Vice President nixon and basically said if i ever become disabled to a point where i cant declare my own disability, its your decision to as to whether or not im disabled. Ill retain the right to come back when i think im able again, but if a group of doctors say that im not able, then you should assume the presidency including moving into the white house. So, i mean, in some ways i think joining the Vice President with the president s cabinet, the president has appointed to office, should give the president a fair amount of security. So, i mean, its hard to come up with a perfect system. At some point one has to rely on people to act as patriots and to use good judgment. And hopefully thats what will happen. Welcome. Thank you. My question deals with the cost of making a questionable choice for Vice President. And im thinking really of john mccain. With a very honorable, heroic military career, a long, dedicated, determined legislative career and reputation, picking someone like sarah palin who really was a very lightweight in the political world, and i just wonder if you think that is going to be held against mccains record or just seen as a crazy blip in his career. Well, i mean, i think its clearly part of his biography. And i think its been something that hes been criticized for. I mean, i think that he thoug thought that in order to have a chance for election, his advisors apparently told him he needed to pick a woman. And he really very much wanted to pick senator lieberman as his running mate, apparently. But he became convinced that first he couldnt get lieberman through the republican convention. And second, that mccainlieberman ticket would lose. So he thought that governor palin might help him energize the base of the Republican Party, attract women to vote who were disgruntled because they felt senator clinton be attractive and then might be attractive to candidacy. I think it was a miscalculation and bad politics as well. I think ultimately the best politics is to choose somebody who people can visualize serving as president. I mean, if you cant visualize somebody sitting in the oval offi office, then its likely to hurt. It may hurt only at the margins. But the other way in which it hurts, and i think in a way that political scientists arent really good at measuring is that its part of it forms part of our opinion of the selector so that when people make choose their running mate, particularly if theyre new, that when they choose their running mate this is their first president ial decision. And if they choose somebody who is not viewed as being president ial, they choose through a process thats not viewed as president ial, it sends a message about their values or Decision Making that can be troubling. So i think it was a mistake on his part. The reasons why president ial candidates might not choose people who are unqualified in the future including the Vice President ial debate and the fact that its hard to hide a Vice President ial candidate these days. Hello. Thank you for coming. That was actually going to be my question, so im really glad i had a backup question. Obviously were in an Election Year this year, one like probably no one in this room has seen. With Hillary Clinton probably going to be getting the democratic nominee, the nomination, i kind of have an idea i have sort of an idea who she might pick as her Vice President ial pick, probably someone in washington now. I am really curious who you think donald trump is going to choose as his Vice President ial pick in that do you think hes going to choose someone from the inside, someone with senate experience or congressional experience which he has indicated to sort of make up for his i dont want to be offensive, lack of Public Policy knowledge. Well, i dont have a clue who hes going to pick. [ laughter ] but also if if you went back on may 5th of any president ial Election Year and you tried to predict who the Vice President ial candidate would be, maybe you all would be better predictors than i would be, but i would be wrong virtually every time, i think. Its hard to predict for a number of reasons. One is you dont know what the context is going to be of the when the selections are going to be made. The selections will probably be made in july some time before the two conventions. And so we dont know what the situation will be. To what extent will the Republican Party disunified . We also dont know who is going to be the pool of available candidates. What will mr. Trumps options be . And what will he perceive as his greatest needs . And to what extent can he fulfill those needs by picking one of the options. So its really difficult to figure it out. I mean, he said, as you point out, that he would pick hes likely to pick somebody whos a politician. A pattern that really has developed is that what political outsiders, or outsiders to washington, governors, or general like general eisenhower, always pick washington insiders. The last time we had two governors run together was in 1948 with thomas dewy and earl warren. Since then every governor has picked somebody either who served in congress or who served in the executive branch. So based on that, one would expect that perhaps mr. Trump would follow that pattern. That would also be a way of bringing a National Security credential on to the ticket. One of the difficulties he has is that there was one member of the senate who endorsed his candidacy, and typically members of the house i mean, representative ryan was a relatively rare choice, but representatives are usually not taken. When they are taken, it tends to, with the exception of the ryan selection, it tends to indicate that the ticket is a weaker ticket and couldnt get a senator or an executive branch official or a governor. So go back to the short answer, i dont have a clue. [ laughter ] no more questions . Thank you very much. [ applause ] thank you. I am a history buff. I do enjoy seeing the fabric of our country and